6 replies to this topic

[Yuumikitsu]

Hey, I'm Yuumikitsu! I have been thinking for a while and I thought I wanted a new PvP gamemode. Something fresh, something different!

So here I have made up a gamemode that I think we could all agree might have some flaws but it's just a starting idea and I want all of you to give me your opinions and suggest how we can improve this idea further. Lets Begin!

 

Alright! So I'm gonna start with explaining how the system would work if we ever see this idea making it into the server.

First of all it's a best out of 3 rounds 1v1 gamemode. 15 mins ea round (if the time runs out the one with most damage dealt to the opponent wins and if it's a draw which can only happen if they got the same amount of health both players lose and half of the points that would have been lost from a normal lose will be withdrawn from their current points)

All games are on certain maps that doesn't give a big advantage if you know the map or not. The games are also randomly matched with people that have around the same points as you have. (it's like a queue).

Each win will give around 250g~ and 25 weapon and armor dusts. (Very unsure of this but I think this gamemode would be a fun alternative for farming if you're more of the PvP type than PvE).

All healing is blocked, and before you start saying it's a part of Invokers etc just keep on reading, I will explain it later.

If you win a game you gain 3 points which is used to measure your position on the leaderboard. If you lose you will lose 2 points and if you have 0 points you wont lose anything. If it's a draw both players lose 1 point each.

 

Now I will move onto the balancing.

I'm not sure if this is 100% balanced but if some small changes has to be made then it's okey.

So I was thinking of having fixed stats!

Right now I was thinking: 30-50k HP, No mana cost, 2k Atk and Matk, 10k Def and Mdef, 100% Aim rate (so no random miss chances), 200-250% atk speed, 350~ Movement speed, 15% Final crit chance, 2 times the normal damage is dealt on crits, And NO Element damage or any stats given by certain gear will be taken into consideration. So you can be a butterfly while still having the same stats as someone with full best unity set.

Now for the buffs/skills fixing

I was thinking having about 50% higher cooldown on every skill in the game (To prevent perma locking combos/skills), All skills have 5/5 and you can change which skills you wanna use before the game starts, Like a 3 mins warmup or just a way to change the skills you wanna use in the game before it starts (No attack boosts or stat bonuses are 5/5 but status effect skills that affect your opponent are)

Skills that affect your opponent will have a 25% less duration to also prevent perma locking further.

Chain combos like archers stuns will not be able to perma lock due to the 25% lowered duration of the stun and the fixed 200-250% attack speed.

Now back to the heals, All heals are disabled and this is because of the fixed stats being abused if you're just gonna hit and run away and heal until you win the game by time running out. Instead the heals are turned into new attack skills cause invokers are usually played with Freeze+X spamming which should not be able to be used in a skill based PvP match.

No Awakening skills! This is to make up for that some classes have rediculous Awakening skills while some classes have kind of useless awakening skills in general.

Some skills that might deal too much will have their damage reduced but some skills that are hard to hit will have the same damage or buffed damage if they still have the same amount of damage as the skills that are almost guaranteed to hit their target.

 

This is everything I came up with so far and if you have any suggestions about improving this or just wanna leave your opinion on this matter please drop a reply down below.

Thanks for reading about this idea and I think we could do something to make something like this happen.

I hope you all have a nice day and keep on playing Dragon Saga!

 

Regards, Yuumikitsu!

[Jackkert]

+1

[Turpi]

-With 25% less stun duraion they can escape before sentinel can use net.

-2k atk for every class.. I dunno. It has a reason why Warriors got higher atk than Archers

But the idea is cool tho.

[Precrush]

I agree with the premise of a gear balanced 1v1 ranked mode, as it is pretty much the only thing that could effectively revive PvP in this game, and I've talked about this before. Even asked if we could get a gear balanced pvp mode in the game in the last Q&A, in which Alteris responded  with cautious positivism. I'd like to contest some of your points though, and add a few things.

 

I don't think this needs to be a new mode. We have ranking pvp in the game, one that is so badly designed it hurts. This can easily replace that, which would hopefully help with the workload of creating something like this.

 

Time. 15 minutes is too long, you can't have game drag on to up to 45 minutes, that's not going to be fun for anyone. A more fitting time window would be max 5 rounds in my opinion, giving a max time of 15 minutes. They need to be quick enough for people to join without too much of a worry about how much time they have to put a side for it. People being too tanky is not going to be a problem with fixed stats, so there's no need for round limits that long.

 

I think the mode should  utilize all the different pvp maps we have in the game. Having different kinds of maps adds variety and lifts the skill ceiling, both of which are only good things. Knowing the "map" gives an advantage in practically every sport and game, that's the way it should be.

 

I agree on your suggestions of what the base stats could be, however this is a part that will need to be constantly changed and also possibly adjusted for different classes to combat balance issues.

 

On the skill side I want to point out that I think the plan is still to create a system were skills can behave differently in pvp and pve (is it?). Keeping this in mind healing does not have to be removed completely, since it can simply be nerfed. This kind of relates to the cooldowns, because I also think basically all cooldowns need to be longer in pvp, some, like heals, significantly longer. I think it is quite fair that using one particular heal would only be available once in that 5 minute time span. Also, I don't quite understand your awakening argument, all classes have different skill sets, some inherently better then others. This is something that can also be adjusted, although I don't think it really needs to be too much. 

 

Matchmaking

 

Now all that is relatively simple to figure out (in idea form), but where the real difficulty with creating ranked systems often stands is matchmaking and the structure of the ladder.

 

Let's start with the ladder. I'm by no means an expert on these and the best way would be to study into these things since I'm sure extensive research has been put into this very topic, but I'll just blabber on like I always do. So you proposed this simple point system based only on the result of the match that was just done. First thing with that is that giving that little points is not really exciting! But that can be easily fixed by adding a few zeros. The real issue is that in such a small sample size of players you have to have a system that prevents feeding wins and enables people to play against others way down the ladder. So in essence, if a player is losing a lot, points gained from winning him have to be lower then from winning another person that's winning a lot. And on the flip side, if you lose to a guy way better then you in terms of rank, you lose less, and if you win, you gain more. To allow for this kind of flexibility more points need to be given out as a baseline, and the formula has to take account the current rating of the 2 players as well as their recent match results. Also, wins can't give more points then are taken off when you lose, because that means the ladder gradually moves upwards which makes it harder to catch up if you start climbing later on. Draws are not really a concern since the likelihood of them in a system like this is so small, I think the one who's lower in the rankings should be awarded the win in the case of a draw. Winning 2-0 as supposed to 2-1 could also give more points. So to sum that up. the formula needs to be more complex then what you suggested.

 

And then matchmaking. As I said, you need to be able to play against anyone that queues up because of the number of players we have, no matter your rank or the rank of you enemy. Fixed stats should enable this, only real issue is that you do have access to more skills and skill points the higher you go. Compensating for this in stats would get so complicated I don't think that's worth going into, instead there's should be a min level of probably level 55 to join the queue. Best solution would be to enable all skills to be used in this mode regardless of your level (basically you'd have another skill build just for this mode), but that'd be much harder to implement. It needs to try to match you up with different people, but also let you face the same person multiple times in a row so that it's more likely that you find a battle quickly. You also need to be able to do pve content while waiting for the queue, should it take a long time.

 

Rewards

 

I think loot comparable to what you would gain from the most basic of farms, f1, should suffice. Both the winner and the loser need to get something for their time to further encourage playing this mode. I think both the loser and the winner get a certain amount of cp and then maybe gold, winner twice as much as the loser. If the match only lasts for a few seconds no rewards should be given (so that people can't just log in and out), and if you leave a match before it's finished you need to lose additional points and get a say a 15 minute penalty, during which time you can't join the queue. The rewards you get also need to scale with who you are facing and how long the match took.

 

Additionally I think there should be seasons, so the ranking gets reset every month. This lets us have seasons and seasonal rewards people can seriously compete for. And these need to be really good for the first 3, maybe an op timed medal and gold, but also give something to everyone that participated depending on the rank they achieved. There should also be a kind of a hall of fame ranking where 100 people that were able to achieve the highest ranking score in one season get their achievement store there.

 

I might as well say a few words about how possible a system like this is. Basically, it's a thought experimentation right now, the technicalities and difficulties in creating this complex thing are huge. We don't even have the normal rankings working yet! I believe that creating a proper balanced 1v1 ranking mode will single-handedly make this game one of the best pvp MMO's you can play and would do wonders to the playerbase and longevity of the game. While we would still have problems with lag and the net code, your success in this mode would pretty much be determined by skill. Even if you didn't play the best class it'd not be too difficult to get a character of another class up to a lvl at which you could compete there. Collecting data from this mode would help the team make more accurate balance changes. It would make this game have something to stream (huge thing now days), create stars and overall just make everything better. So if the team is going to take a big task on, I believe this to be the one.

 

[Yuumikitsu]

I agree with the premise of a gear balanced 1v1 ranked mode, as it is pretty much the only thing that could effectively revive PvP in this game, and I've talked about this before. Even asked if we could get a gear balanced pvp mode in the game in the last Q&A, in which Alteris responded with cautious positivism. I'd like to contest some of your points though, and add a few things. (I'm glad you agreed and that you are interested in this matter! )

I don't think this needs to be a new mode. We have ranking pvp in the game, one that is so badly designed it hurts. This can easily replace that, which would hopefully help with the workload of creating something like this. (The current state of the "Ranking" gamemode is probably one of the worst things in this game IMO. Reworking this could be good as you say)

Time. 15 minutes is too long, you can't have game drag on to up to 45 minutes, that's not going to be fun for anyone. A more fitting time window would be max 5 rounds in my opinion, giving a max time of 15 minutes. They need to be quick enough for people to join without too much of a worry about how much time they have to put a side for it. People being too tanky is not going to be a problem with fixed stats, so there's no need for round limits that long. (I agree that 45 mins might be too long but it was the thing that popped up in my mind. 15 min max games would be more fun and easy to pick up if you have to wait 10-15 mins for dinner to get ready or just wanna kill time while doing something fun)

I think the mode should utilize all the different pvp maps we have in the game. Having different kinds of maps adds variety and lifts the skill ceiling, both of which are only good things. Knowing the "map" gives an advantage in practically every sport and game, that's the way it should be. (This is true but I just hope that knowing the map better than the other wont almost guarantee you a win.)

I agree on your suggestions of what the base stats could be, however this is a part that will need to be constantly changed and also possibly adjusted for different classes to combat balance issues. (Just the base idea and I just chose some stats that I thought would be a good starting point)

On the skill side I want to point out that I think the plan is still to create a system were skills can behave differently in pvp and pve (is it?). (It is!)

Keeping this in mind healing does not have to be removed completely, since it can simply be nerfed. This kind of relates to the cooldowns, because I also think basically all cooldowns need to be longer in pvp, some, like heals, significantly longer. I think it is quite fair that using one particular heal would only be available once in that 5 minute time span. Also, I don't quite understand your awakening argument, all classes have different skill sets, some inherently better then others. This is something that can also be adjusted, although I don't think it really needs to be too much. (I don't really like the idea of healing in a 1v1 where if the game is about to end you could just heal and run away/dash away to win by having the most HP left. But this could be worked with in some way. Also the Awakening argument was mostly towards summoners Dark Knight ability compared to like Destroyers Awakening abilities, but once again it could be fixed with some lowered damage. Also the 5 min rounds could be better but then the HP might need to be lowered or just more damage)

Matchmaking

Now all that is relatively simple to figure out (in idea form), but where the real difficulty with creating ranked systems often stands is matchmaking and the structure of the ladder. (I agree, this needs alot of good suggestions and opinions)

Let's start with the ladder. I'm by no means an expert on these and the best way would be to study into these things since I'm sure extensive research has been put into this very topic, but I'll just blabber on like I always do. So you proposed this simple point system based only on the result of the match that was just done. First thing with that is that giving that little points is not really exciting! But that can be easily fixed by adding a few zeros. The real issue is that in such a small sample size of players you have to have a system that prevents feeding wins and enables people to play against others way down the ladder. So in essence, if a player is losing a lot, points gained from winning him have to be lower then from winning another person that's winning a lot. And on the flip side, if you lose to a guy way better then you in terms of rank, you lose less, and if you win, you gain more. To allow for this kind of flexibility more points need to be given out as a baseline, and the formula has to take account the current rating of the 2 players as well as their recent match results. Also, wins can't give more points then are taken off when you lose, because that means the ladder gradually moves upwards which makes it harder to catch up if you start climbing later on. Draws are not really a concern since the likelihood of them in a system like this is so small, I think the one who's lower in the rankings should be awarded the win in the case of a draw. Winning 2-0 as supposed to 2-1 could also give more points. So to sum that up. the formula needs to be more complex then what you suggested. (This is just the base idea that I came up with so it definitely needs to be more complex! The problem is the feeders etc that get a cooldown. What if you are so good that you kill them fast, they raqequit and you got no points or reward, so this needs a better way to go around this problem)

And then matchmaking. As I said, you need to be able to play against anyone that queues up because of the number of players we have, no matter your rank or the rank of you enemy. Fixed stats should enable this, only real issue is that you do have access to more skills and skill points the higher you go. Compensating for this in stats would get so complicated I don't think that's worth going into, instead there's should be a min level of probably level 55 to join the queue. Best solution would be to enable all skills to be used in this mode regardless of your level (basically you'd have another skill build just for this mode), but that'd be much harder to implement. (Just what I meant with the skill tree for just this gamemode and I think I mentioned a fixed level, but if I didn't I was thinking of having the level fixed to around 75 or something but it could even be lvl 1 with the fixed stats. I just think all skills should be 5/5 in the gamemode and all skills unlocked even if you're 55 etc.)

It needs to try to match you up with different people, but also let you face the same person multiple times in a row so that it's more likely that you find a battle quickly. You also need to be able to do pve content while waiting for the queue, should it take a long time. (Maybe you could start searching for a game and then when you find the game while farming or talking in PoW you have 60 seconds to Accept the map change. Also facing the same person should be possible since I personally want this to be as balanced as possible and makes you able to improve in PvP with people around your points)

Rewards

I think loot comparable to what you would gain from the most basic of farms, f1, should suffice. Both the winner and the loser need to get something for their time to further encourage playing this mode. I think both the loser and the winner get a certain amount of cp and then maybe gold, winner twice as much as the loser. If the match only lasts for a few seconds no rewards should be given (so that people can't just log in and out), and if you leave a match before it's finished you need to lose additional points and get a say a 15 minute penalty, during which time you can't join the queue. The rewards you get also need to scale with who you are facing and how long the match took. (Scaling could be good but would need alot of balancing)

Additionally I think there should be seasons, so the ranking gets reset every month. This lets us have seasons and seasonal rewards people can seriously compete for. (Didn't think of that! Would be nice!)

maybe an op timed medal (This would be unfair for the PvE players but they did give someone 5k Demolition damage so why not)

There should also be a kind of a hall of fame ranking where 100 people that were able to achieve the highest ranking score in one season get their achievement store there. (Interesting.... Would be nice for inspiration to keep on battling after being rank 1 with alot more points than the lower ranks)

I believe that creating a proper balanced 1v1 ranking mode will single-handedly make this game one of the best pvp MMO's you can play and would do wonders to the playerbase and longevity of the game. (I believe so aswell. This game is a really good MMO but the PvP is kind of broken as it is right now)

your success in this mode would pretty much be determined by skill. (That's what I wanted to achive with the fixed stats)

So if the team is going to take a big task on, I believe this to be the one. (I'm glad you agreed)

I left all my notes after the parts I thought I could comment on. Overall I think you and I are moving towards the same direction and that we agree that this could improve this game alot! I'm looking forward to more of these replies!

Edited by Yuumikitsu, 25 March 2016 - 01:06 PM.

[Precrush]

You would get points if your opponent quit, since it wouldn't be your fault! But if he had quit say 10 matches before that then you'd get very little points.

[Yuumikitsu]

You would get points if your opponent quit, since it wouldn't be your fault! But if he had quit say 10 matches before that then you'd get very little points.

I think that could be a solid system. I really hope we can make something out of these great ideas!
Cause this means that if you're really good at the game and the ranking resets. Then if you get matched up against leavers you will have a harder time climbing, thus making you able to have more of a challenge when climbing to the top again!
The only thing I'm really worried about right now on this "leaving" topic is that what if someone gets matched up against their 2nd char (If they have 2 PCs) Then they can get the other char really low in HP and kill them in the last minute of the game to get the max reward, So the rewards should scale with your points as I think you said in your last post (the long one).

Edited by Yuumikitsu, 25 March 2016 - 09:50 PM.